The colors of autumn
by The hazel-eyed bookworm
Summary: Harry loves fire. Nobody else does. CHALLENGE
1. Challenge

**Hello, guys! Here's a oneshot of, once again, Harry Potter and Firebreather. Back when I was giving the challenge of writing a xover of these fandoms, one of the authors I sent it was sketching a Harry-is-Duncan kind of story. I got hooked by that idea, unfortunately she never answered me back... Though the idea still stands, and I decided to do a oneshot about it (pretty crappy).**

 **If someone is interested, this can be used as a prologue for the story.**

 **To avoid confusion, the story is told between one time Harry was burning something, and throughout the years.**

 **I don' own neither HP or Firebreather. Enjoy!**

 **H. E. B.**

* * *

 _Harry Potter sighed as he picked up the pages that remained of his once-complete essay. It wasn't fair. Of course he'd be the one who Dudley and his lackeys would pick on this time. The only thing he could do was stand and watch as they took his backpack and threw it around, eventually opening it and spilling its contents around._

 _ **'They had no right…'**_ _Harry thought, the pages crumpled in his hand as he went to the park, following a shortcut that many of his classmates used to go home. Trying not to think about what happened, the green-eyed kid looked around. A few kids were playing in the swings while the parents watched nearby. A dog was resting on a patch of grass, catching as much sunlight as he could. A couple of girls from his school were chattering about who-knows-what._

 _The scenery around him was both familiar and boring. Nobody looking at him with inquisitive eyes, wanting to know. Nobody there about to tattletale on what he was about to do, yet he still felt like a sore thumb every time he decided to do _it_. _

_But of course, they only saw the 'delinquent' image that his relatives seemed so bent on cultivate, almost harmless, typical, normal. They didn't suspect what was behind that._

 _Because there is always something more behind such a behavior._

* * *

There was something odd about the boy.

At first Petunia had thought it to be his freaky powers. The boy was a freak after all, she wouldn't have been surprising if he did something.

Once, Dudley had been outside with his friends and the boy was painting the fence. Petunia was cleaning the dirty dishes when she heard her son scream. She was outside in a heartbeat, intending to see what the matter was, who had hurt or scared her Dudley.

Dudley was on the ground, a terrified look on his face. His friends had backed away, staring at Harry as if he were a ghost. A look of pure, undiluted surprise marred the black-haired boy's features.

Dudley had broken his wrist.

Vernon had come home enraged when he heard the news. He had attempted to hit Harry as soon as he saw him.

The man was sent to the hospital with a concussion and had to take a week off work as a result. When Petunia interrogated Harry, the only thing he said to her was, _'He must have slipped, Aunt Petunia. I didn't see him come in.'_

Neither Vernon nor Dudley touched the boy anymore after the whole incident.

* * *

 _It was always like this. Nobody there to see him. Nobody there to stop the bullies from stopping him when he was leaving school. Again and again and again._

 _Power was a strange thing._

 _Power._

 _Raw. Animalistic instinct. Once was never enough._

 _Before he was aware of what he was doing, the ten-year-old was dashing, not caring how far he ran. He had walked those streets his whole life, he knew them just the same as if they were etched in his head with a sharp knife. Never in the same place twice, away from onlookers._

 _He knew it wasn't right, what he was about to do. He knew it was dangerous, but he couldn't help it. People become addicts to anything that makes them feel better for a while. It happens with alcohol, coffee, people... Cigarettes were almost normal, same with alcohol, but his..._

 _His addiction wasn't welcomed around._

* * *

Another incident that Petunia recalled, was something that should have remembered clearer.

 _"Mommy, can I have some friends over for dinner?"_

A smile spread over Petunia's face. " _Of course you can sweetie. Just remember that you can't have more than three people over at a time- we can't fit more at the dinner table."_

Petunia spied Harry peeking around the corner at the conversation between herself and Dudley, and her body language grew tense. _"I thought you still had chores to do."_

 _"I finished my chores, ma'am."_

 _"Then what are you doing, peering around corners like some sort of ghoul?"_

The boy averted his eyes. _"I was wanting to ask you a question."_

 _"You know that questions aren't well tolerated in this family."_

The boy, if possible, shrunk even further in on himself. _"I was wondering if you had ever heard about someone named Belloc?"_

Petunia's facial expressions scrunched up. _"What on earth are you talking about?"_

 _"The name popped into my head one day and it seemed rather familiar…"_

Petunia clenched her hands, thinking the boy was talking about some character in some book. _"I have never heard of this man, and you must be imagining things, as per usual. I want to hear no mention of this man again."_

Petunia shuffled the incident away in her head, remembering the name. She didn't recall ever hearing about this man in relation to Lily or anyone else of… their world before.

The next time Petunia heard mention of this man was the next day. The boy had stopped eating his potatoes to place his fork on the table. Usually the fork never leaves the boy's hand until he is finished.

 _"Aunt Petunia, I found out who Belloc was today."_

 _"I thought I told you I didn't want any mention of this man."_

The boy stared at his plate _. "Apparently Kaiju is a race of monsters that had a War with the humans in America eleven years ago. Apparently this Belloc was their King."_

Oh, now she remembered. What a freakish world they lived in. Petunia raised an eyebrow. _"Oh?"_

 _"And apparently the Kaiju were close to winning."_

Petunia looked at her husband, whose face was now brandishing a light shade of red. _"Where did you hear of this name?"_

 _"Oh, it was mentioned in our history book at school."_

* * *

 _Harry hesitated, remembering the warnings and the asking. He shouldn't be doing that, he knew that much, but it hadn't hurt anyone so far. ' **They all think I'm some sort of troublemaker…I'd be proving them right if I do this…'**_

 _But still…still…_

 _A few pages ripped off his notebook, the ruined essay, some sticks and his trusted lighter. The nascent fire played amid the kindling like a child with a new toy, its flames leaping in excitement, it's quiet crackling like so much giggling in the woods. Harry_ _allowed a smile to form on his face._

* * *

Harry made sure he had the curtains of his Hogwarts bed tightly shut. He cursed himself for not knowing shielding charms. If someone wanted to see what he was doing, they would; but the snores of his roommates told another story.

His housemates had abandoned him, Neville and Hermione over some points lost. The Weasley Twins lost that much every other week and yet he was despised, because of –what he supposed the reason to be- his celebrity status. And Neville and Hermione were dragged along, too, but at least it wasn't that bad for them.

Growling in anger at his House's hypocrisy, the Boy-Who-Lived flickered his wand, whispering the spell he had found in a book. 'Incendio.'

A single flame shot up from his wand, illuminating the tight space he was enclosed in, dancing and swirling. The black-haired boy smiled, glad he had a Muggle alternative for the spell. It was, in essence, an alternative of the lighter.

Before Harry realized, the flame had moved towards his hand, enveloping it.

It took Harry a few moments to realize he didn't feel pain, but warmth. Like his hand was wrapped in a blanket.

It didn't burn. The flames…they didn't burn **at all**.

When Harry awoke the next morning, he spent days researching in the vast labyrinth that was Hogwarts' library some clue about what immunity to fire could mean. He found nothing. He had already survived a Killing Curse, what other impossible things made him?

That question haunted him for the rest of the year. But right at that moment, as he enjoyed the flame's caress, he didn't care about the meaning. He just stared at it, eyes a glowing yellow-green.

* * *

 _Heat. Burning. Flames danced upon papers. For a little while it eased his consciousness, it calmed him, the orange, red, blue, even purple, and white, were a balm to his mind, if not his body._

* * *

Ever since the incident with the Stone, Harry hadn't been dreaming. At all. _'It's not a big deal,'_ he once told Ron as the exhaustion caught up with him. And for a while it wasn't.

It truly wasn't.

* * *

 _The dancing flames were pretty, as well as tantalizingly dangerous. There was something just mesmerizing about a flickering flame, the red, yellow, orange. The colors of autumn. He loved to feel its warmth, to test its limits, to see how they consumed everything they touched._

 _It was beautiful._

 _So incredibly beautiful._

* * *

Eleven-year-old Harry flickered his lighter open and close as he listened to Dobby's story, while thanking God that the fire calmed him, otherwise he'd be demanding the elf give him the letters. He didn't know which kind of powers House Elves had, and he didn't want to find out.

At least the lack of letters had given his lighter some use. Since he was little, loneliness made him experiment. Harry liked to play with fire, liked what the flames did, how they transformed objects, textures, colors. He liked to think it was art, in a way. Sometimes Harry thought he must be a little insane to think like that. He didn't know, honestly. It was his secret. It was his defect. He loved fire. Everyone else, didn't.

Harry was pretty sure Hogwarts had the same brand of soap for all years and the overexposure had made him allergic. When he once said that it was a joke, but the truth was, he itched, just a little bit, all the time. First just on his skin, but then- Deeper?

It didn't take long for his skin to have the faintest orange hue. It could be easily hidden with a glamour. Nothing more than a minor annoyance, really.

* * *

 _'Every extreme is bad'_ _, was the saying. As much as the fire was dangerous, it was useful. It could keep you warm in the days of cold weather, cook your food so it tasted better, provide with light, and it could be used as a weapon. Or, like Harry, to burn away your problems._

* * *

Between burning some leaves and Sirius Black, somewhere along the year the itching had returned, distracting him from the other two.

Of course, his friends were prone to noticing something was wrong, and their concern made itself known quickly. But the concern also meant that they knew something was still wrong. Once, when Harry was being helped with some homework, he felt Hermione's nails chasing up and down his spine - she didn't feel the itch, but knew that he still did.

God, Harry wished so hard that scratching helped. He wished he knew what was wrong. Ron knew he would be the first to know if Harry had even an inkling. He would be the first to know. He would. He swore would.

* * *

 _At first he just kept a match book in his pocket and would strike them while he sat on the swings, watching the obedient flame flicker in the breeze, blackening the wood, transforming it to charcoal at his command. An uncontrollable grin would spread across his features._

* * *

Harry would have taken for granted that he'd have nightmares after the whole TriWizard fiasco, but he was wrong. Harry still didn't dream. Pomfrey didn't know what to say. She ran a battery of increasingly bizarre tests and didn't find anything conclusive, but he could tell that something was troubling her. Then, inexplicably, the physical symptoms started to fade.

A few months after that, Hermione told him he was looking better. And he was, on the outside. What was left behind was worse. At least before Harry could give name to the pain and physical discomfort. But now –

One night he found himself wandering barefoot in the castle, looking for coal or maybe meat, any kind was acceptable. The boy stopped when he realized he wanted to eat some. Lots of it. He didn't know why.

* * *

 _Soon he graduated to burning things related to whatever incident that had angered him, often times the flame would be a different hue or emit copious black smoke that choked him. For that brief moment in time that the flames leapt, devouring feverishly, he became tranquil._

* * *

Over that summer, he and his friends exchanged letters. Harry didn't tell them anything about his… changes.

It's not like Harry wanted to keep that to himself. He didn't, really. It was…he didn't know how to describe anything that was happening with him. He simply didn't have words for the feeling that—

That there was heaviness, a great _size_ deep inside himself, more massive than was possible. That sometimes he saw colors that didn't have names. That there was something that was both far away from and sliding sideways into him, day by day.

 _There's nothing strange in the mirror,_ Harry would tell himself firmly (while hoping hoping hoping oh always hoping). _I look exactly the same._

He looked exactly the same, but sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he swore he could see strange parts of himself that didn't used to be there, hovering just beyond his ability to perceive them.

He was able to see one thing, eventually, when it became so noticeable even his relatives had noticed. His hair had been getting lighter, lighter, lighter. He couldn't be considered a brunet. His hair was now a golden blond.

Even more changes gave way during that summer. His eye color gave way to an odd shade of amber. He didn't need glasses anymore. His skin was now definitely orange.

He was scared. And then he was not.

His skin had always been odd. But he hadn't always had so many teeth.

* * *

 _He had heard that nail polish made things burn quicker, but preferred to stick to his current methods. He had seen countless of 'arsonists' going to jail for burning oo much, for losing their minds in the fire. He didn't want anything getting out of hand._

* * *

For the first time that summer, he felt confident enough to rely on the fire again. Orange and blue and green and flickers of white. He extended his hand and let the flames engulf the limb, enjoying the way they licked his arm, a warmth so different from the one the sun gave… Hotter, drier. A few strange frog-like creatures were walking around.

The moment would've been close to perfect if Dudley and his cronies hadn't decided to pass the time in the park, like him. And threatened to tell on him. And intended to pick on a fight with him.

Hours later, Harry endured a yelling courtesy of his 'dearest' relatives. Too blind to see what was in front of their noses.

Truth to be told, he _had_ gone overbroad a bit, but those boys had had it coming a long, long time ago. If he had enjoyed pouncing on them, what did it matter? If he had enjoyed the way the skin thinned over his knuckles as he had punched the boys, if he had enjoyed the sound of the one's nose breaking, if he had enjoyed the wet cries of the other as he stepped on his fingers, did it matter?

If he had enjoyed it, so what?

* * *

 _As odd as it sounded, Harry considered fire his friend. And that, to someone surrounded by wood and heat, is something very dangerous._

* * *

Fifteen-year-old Harry stopped trying to hear the news from behind his Aunt's bushes as his relatives shrieked in alarm and stepped out of the house.

Apparently, an earthquake was happening on Privet Drive. Except… it wasn't. Something was rising from the ground, something big. Harry's heart leapt to his throat as the thing finally stood, its height of unimaginable proportions.

Around him, all hell broke lose.

"Monster!" a woman yelled.

A large golden eye was looking straight at him. Harry didn't know how he knew, didn't know why he wasn't running yet, why he wasn't more scared.

Somehow, he recognized this creature.

"-Kaiju." Was the only thing Harry whispered among the panic around him.


	2. Rules and spread the word

**Okay people, I normally wouldn't post anything else here...but this is a challenge. If you need more specific rules, you can PM me. If you don't want to write but to read this, please spread the word about this. I want to read this too, but it's a challenge for a reason.**

 **If you are interested in continuing this please PM me.**

 **H. E. B.**


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